Two weeks ago I wrote about The Story of Pi, a semi-educational retro video that visually explains Pi. One commenter (lynn) pointed out a song I hadn’t heard before, The Pi Song by Antoni Chan and Ken Ferrier. I present it below for your weekend edutainment. Set to the tune of the classic Don McLean song “American Pie,” this is kind of a hoot. (NOTE: the video below is just the first part; for the whole thing check out this video.)

Complete lyrics after the jump.

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A new PBS* documentary, The Botany of Desire, premieres Wednesday night (tonight!) at 8pm on PBS stations throughout the US. It’s based on the popular Michael Pollan book of the same name, and I urge you to carve out two hours (in most markets between 8pm – 10pm) on Wednesday night to watch it. The program is packed with science, history, and beautiful photography.

I’ve seen the film in advance, and I highly recommend it, particularly if you’re interested in any of the four plants featured in it: tulip, marijuana, potato, and apple. By telling the stories of these plants, Pollan explains how in some ways the plants are manipulating us, rather than the other way around — in the same way that flowers “use” bees to spread their pollen, these plants have “used” humans to spread themselves across the planet and out-compete other plants. One note: the program may not be suitable for young children, as there is use of the word “sex” (as applied to plants) and discussion of marijuana. It also might be pretty boring for the under-twelve set (despite beautiful flower photography), unless they’re thoroughly nerdy.

Here’s a preview of the documentary:

After the jump, I include some notes on each plant discussed in the documentary.

The Apple – Good for Booze AND for Eatin’

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In honor of Bill Nye’s appearance (yelling “I’m just a speck!”) in We Are All Connected, I thought I’d round up some clips of his classic science show for kids. Enjoy!

Quicksand!

Quicksand is just really, really wet land!

Illusions!

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Did you enjoy the auto-tuned “Cosmos” song featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking? If so, get ready for more science/music awesomeness. Here’s another song and video by the same artist (Colorpulse) featuring: Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye.

You can download MP3s and learn more from SymphonyOfScience.com.

Complete lyrics are after the jump.

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I’m not sure whether this counts as a science video or just a “stupid human trick,” but either way: did you know that baby shampoo lets you blow huge bubbles from your mouth? Brandon Hardesty thinks it’s AMAZING. And it kind of is. Amaze your babies, your friends, your pets…but maybe not your parents.

This is just a short video of Mr. Hardesty showing his masterful technique for blowing huge bubbles using baby shampoo. Slightly gross (since he gets baby shampoo all over his face and neck) but work-safe.

(Via Waxy.org.)

It’s Thursday, and time for another retro science video! This time around, a brief (three-minute) explanation of Pi, that mischievous, irrational number. The following video explains visually how to calculate pi, and thus where formulae like pi * r-squared come from. (I can still remember my geometry teacher making the corny joke for the thousandth time: “Pie aren’t square. It are round!”).

Did you know that NOVA has a YouTube Channel? Well, surprise! Not all the episodes are there, but here are some of my favorites.

Cracking the Maya Code

About the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphs. This episode includes several appearances by my former FSU professor, Kathryn Josserand (she was a linguist and Mayan language expert; there’s nice remembrance of her here).

Secrets of the Parthenon

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This is weird and mesmerizing: ultra slow-motion video of bullets impacting various materials (glass, wood, metal, hollow-points on ballistics gel, and so on). The soundtrack adds nothing to the experience, so you might as well mute it (unless you want to have a rave while watching the video). But from a scientific perspective, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here…what was most interesting to me was watching the bullets instantly liquify when they hit hard surfaces (like harder metals). There are also several shots in which the bullets are impacted by other projectiles in mid-flight.

The best news: there’s nothing gross here, just very cleanly photographed bullet impacts on non-gross objects.

(Via Kottke.org.)

How do beekeepers get honey out of honeycombs? Would you believe it involves a gigantic centrifuge and some 90’s rap? (Well, the latter is just edutainment, not technically part of the extraction process.) Anyway, this vintage Reading Rainbow clip explains the process a beekeeper goes through to harvest the honey, then there’s a segment with a hilarious rap explaining why bees are important, and finally we see a new beehive being transferred into a new hive box. (That last part is really surprising and fun — you get to see how beekeepers pack and unpack a bee colony for mailing via US Post.)

Enjoy, and particularly keep an eye out for Levar Burton’s bee-related puns (FWIW, apparently the clip in which kids picked out some books has been edited out to fit the YouTube 10-minute time limit):

So this is real. Seriously. A group of researchers have put together a system called PhotoSketch which allows the user to literally sketch a desired scene (see above for an example), label each part of the scene with keywords, then PhotoSketch searches the web for photos and assembles a photographic version of the sketch. Um. Wow?

If you’ll recall, Skynet (the killer computer “defense” system from Terminator) became self-aware at 2:14am EDT August 29, 1997. So it’s taken Skynet twelve years to learn how to draw. I think we’re safe for a bit longer. But sketch while you can, people. There is no fate but what we make.

Here’s a video of PhotoSketch in action:

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

(Note: you can watch in HD at the Vimeo site.)

Also for what it’s worth, many commenters have been insisting that this is a hoax. How could a computer possibly do such a thing? Well, the creators have released the source code binaries (Windows only, link updated), presented a paper at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 on the technology, and even made that paper available for download.

(Via Kottke.org.)